Promoting collaboration between early education and mental health professionals to support trauma-impacted children

Introduction

Trauma in childhood is widespread. For example, findings from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study indicate that more than three in five Australians have experienced abuse or neglect during their childhood (Haslam et al., 2023).

Trauma, as a result of maltreatment or other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs),¹ carries lasting consequences for children’s development, health and wellbeing. Impacts may be immediate, such as difficulties with sleep, behaviours or relationships, or long-term, including challenges with learning, emotional regulation, physical health and overall wellbeing (Dye, 2018). Without support, trauma can shape a child’s trajectory across their lifespan. Early prevention, identification and intervention are therefore vital strategies for buffering or reducing these negative impacts.

Early childhood educators are often among the first to notice when a child is struggling and potentially impacted by trauma. Their daily interactions with children give them unique insights into children’s lives and behaviour and provide critical opportunities to intervene early and support young children. Despite this, educators often face persistent challenges in responding to children’s complex needs.

This article explores how collaboration between early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals and mental health professionals can address some of these challenges and support children impacted by trauma.

Opportunities and challenges in ECEC in supporting trauma-impacted children

ECEC are community services that provide education and care to children from birth to age five (Department of Education, 2022). They are almost universally accessed by families with young children and offer daily, trusted interactions between educators, children and families.

In 2024, over 90% of four-year-olds and approximately 70% of three-year-olds in Australia were enrolled in some form of ECEC (Productivity Commission, 2024). As a result, ECEC educators are often the first professionals to witness the impacts of trauma, such as changes in behaviours, emotional responses and learning difficulties.

Because ECEC educators also have expertise in child development and learning, provide stability and have nurturing relationships with children, they can help create safe and supportive environments for trauma-impacted children’s recovery and resilience.

However, educators face substantial challenges in supporting children impacted by trauma. These include:

• limited training in trauma and trauma-informed practice
• lack of organisational support
• unclear roles and/or responsibilities
• unclear boundaries (Sun, Tamblyn & Morris et al., 2024).

These barriers are in addition to educators’ existing responsibilities for meeting the diverse needs of all children in their care – something that can be especially challenging when working with children experiencing vulnerability (Allen et al., 2018; Sun, Skouteris & Bowden et al., 2024).

It is therefore crucial to recognise both the critical role of these educators and to make sure they are adequately supported. This includes professional support (to help educators effectively support children impacted by trauma) and psychological support (to enable and sustain this emotionally demanding work).

Working together: Why collaboration matters

ECEC educators and mental health practitioners are both important supports for children impacted by trauma and bring different but complementary expertise.

Educators spend extended time with children in natural settings, building deep knowledge of their interests, development and behaviours through ongoing observation. However, they may not know what to do when a child shows signs of trauma.

Mental health professionals can contribute specialised expertise in screening, therapy, trauma-informed and trauma-specific practice. However, they rely on parents or other professionals to refer children to their care, which means they may not have early access or contact with children impacted by trauma.

For either professional group to adequately support children impacted by trauma, there is a need for what is sometimes described as ‘cross-sector collaboration’. This process involves professionals or organisations from different sectors (such as education and health) working together to collectively support children (Sun, Tamblyn & Morris et al., 2024).

Emerging evidence points to the positive impacts of collaboration between ECEC and mental health professionals for children and educators. For example, a recent review of the evidence suggests that cross-sector collaboration can strengthen educators’ ability to use trauma-informed approaches by enabling them to:

• access specialist knowledge
• share responsibility for supporting children
• coordinate responses across services.

Educators reported greater confidence and wellbeing, improved teacher–child interactions and better outcomes for children, including enhanced sense of safety and trust and improved behavioural and emotional regulation (Sun et al., 2025).

Collaboration approaches between ECEC and mental health professionals

There are several different ways that educators and mental health professionals can work together to support children affected by trauma. A recent review of the literature on cross-disciplinary collaboration within ECEC and primary school settings grouped some of the most common approaches into overarching categories (Sun et al., 2025):

• Consultation: Mental health professionals advise educators on supporting trauma-impacted children and help sustain educator wellbeing. An example is TraCS, a program that supports ECEC educators working with trauma-impacted children to create safe and responsive environments while also offering guidance on managing complex behaviours.
• Coaching: Mental health professionals work alongside educators over time to build skills and support reflective practice. This may involve regular sessions where educators discuss challenging situations, receive feedback and develop strategies to support trauma-impacted children.
• Co-screening: Educators contribute their ongoing observations of children’s behaviours, emotions and development in the early learning environment. Mental health professionals contribute specialised expertise to help interpret these observations. This may involve joint discussions about concerning behaviours, structured observation tools or consultation meetings to determine whether additional support or referral may be appropriate.
• Co-delivery: Mental health practitioners and educators jointly implement group programs or trauma-informed curricula in ECEC settings.

At present, collaborations often position mental health professionals as the lead providers of trauma-informed expertise. However, effective collaboration can be more of a partnership, where educators are recognised as key partners whose knowledge of children, families and the everyday learning environment is critical to supporting trauma-impacted children (Sun et al., 2025).

Barriers to collaboration

Although cross-sector collaboration shows promise for improving child outcomes, it is not without challenges at the individual, organisational and system levels.

Some educators have indicated that their ability to collaborate effectively with other professions is hindered by:

• lack of training in mental health
• lack of time or resources
• differing professional perspectives on child development (Ekornes, 2015; Sun, Skouteris & Bowden et al., 2024).

Even when different professional groups, such as educators and mental health professionals, share common goals, cross-sector collaboration can be impeded by differences in how their organisations are structured, how decisions are made and how issues are escalated. High staff turnover can also be a barrier to ongoing collaboration, as it results in lack of continuity with staff involved in the collaboration (O’Malley et al., 2017).

Effective collaboration requires time – both to build trust between professionals and to engage in the work of collaboration itself. This can require dedicated funding. However, a key challenge across both the organisational and systems levels is a lack of dedicated funding for collaboration (Ekornes, 2015).

What makes collaboration work: The ingredients of success

Successful collaboration depends on more than goodwill. The evidence base for what supports collaboration between ECEC and mental health professionals is still in its infancy. However, broader research on cross-sector collaboration (i.e. not specifically between ECEC and mental health professionals) points to ‘key ingredients’ that can make it work (Sun, Skouteris & Tamblyn et al., 2024). These include:

Professional-level enablers:

• Clarity of roles
• Shared learning
• Open communication
• Trust and respect
• Collective ownership

Organisation-level enablers:

• Leadership support
• Facilitating policies
• Principled engagement
• Mutual understanding
• Adequate resources

These ‘key ingredients’ are explored in the form of a fictional case study in the following section, with the purpose of showing what collaboration could look like. However, it is important to acknowledge the common barriers faced (as described in the previous section) and recognise that collaboration can take time and may not look exactly like what we describe here.

Conclusion

With the right structures, and with committed partnerships in place, collaboration between ECEC and mental health professionals has the potential to support early intervention for trauma-impacted children. These collaborations can strengthen educators’ confidence, skills and wellbeing, enhance children’s development and potentially provide families with the comprehensive support they need.

Although more research is required to fully understand what makes for effective collaboration between ECEC and mental health professionals, the existing research points to key ingredients for success, which can be drawn upon when considering collaboration. This includes allowing time and resources to build relationships of trust, shared understanding, clarity of roles and opportunities for shared learning.